How Threat Intelligence Can Help Operators and Government

NEW YORK, Oct. 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cobwebs Technologies announced today that its AI-powered WEBINT platform helps CI operators and governments to detect and monitor cyber threats aimed at their critical infrastructures.

Critical infrastructures, including electricity, oil, gas, and water supply systems, as well as transportation hubs, are under cyberattack. Threat actors attack critical infrastructure for various reasons. Some of these attacks are motivated by hacktivism to make a political statement. Others are launched for ransom, as in the case of the recent cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline that transports roughly 2.5 million barrels of fuel daily from the Gulf Coast to the Eastern Seaboard. The company paid the threat actors a reported $4.4 million to resume operations. The third category of cyberattacks on critical infrastructure is conducted by state-sponsored threat actors, such as the recent cyberattack on four critical infrastructure organizations in South East Asia.

The number, intensity, and impact of cyberattacks on critical infrastructures keep rising by 25% - 40% annually. Governments and network operators are taking action. For example, the current POTUS has signed a Memorandum on Improving Cybersecurity for Critical Infrastructure Control and the EU has issued its NIS Directive to protect the national critical infrastructure of its member states. Administrators and operators of critical infrastructures are implementing changes to mitigate or remove cyber risks, but such projects could take months, even years since it requires fundamental structural changes at high costs.

Due to manpower and time restraints, critical infrastructure operators and government agencies are looking for open source software for automated intelligence on potential and imminent cyber threats. They are turning to open source threat intelligence tools that cannot only detect cyberattacks in real-time but also have cyber threat monitoring capabilities to identify emerging cyber threats targeting the critical infrastructure.

"Especially after the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, it became clear to us that we needed a solution that could detect cyber threats aimed at our oil company in real-time. But even more, we also needed that solution to have cyber threat monitoring capabilities, so we could take proactive measures. After looking at various options, we chose the Cobwebs WEBINT platform since it ticked all the boxes," stated the IC operation manager of a major oil company. "We wanted a smart and automated solution since we do not have the manpower and expertise to collect and analyze big data for actionable insights. The platform of Cobwebs now does that for us - it collects and analyzes relevant data from open sources on all layers of the internet. It then presents the analyzed results in graphs and maps, so we can see who is planning what and where against us. We also programmed the platform with relevant keywords and phrases to alert us when relevant information crops up. This allows us to be proactive and prevent a potential shutdown of our pipelines following a cyber threat."

The Cobwebs AI-powered web intelligence platform offers a powerful way for detecting, analyzing, and monitoring threats and risks aimed at critical infrastructures. The platform's predictive analytics and machine-learning algorithms collect and analyze big data, which allows CI operators to get comprehensive insights for their cyber threat monitoring. The platform employs Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms to get insight into the sentiments and intentions of (potential) terrorists and context in multiple languages, which is essential for sentiment analysis.

With the WEBINT platform of Cobwebs as part of their toolset, operators and government agencies will be able to identify and prevent cyberattacks aimed at their critical infrastructures.

To learn more, visit www.cobwebs.com
or contact us @: info@cobwebs.com